The biblical story of Hagar stands as a rebuke to a system that treats motherhood as contractual, argues Lois Mclatchie-Miller. Renting a womb can never be ethical
This week, pop star Meghan Trainor announced the birth of her daughter with a beautiful photo on Instagram – her newborn baby still covered in mucus from the birth canal. But the caption on the photo changed the dynamic.
Meghan revealed she had not delivered her child, but commissioned her via surrogacy – hiring another woman to gestate her for nine months, birth her, then hand her over.
Meghan joins a growing list of celebrities who have contracted other women to carry their children. Lily Collins, Michelle Williams, and Kim Kardashian have all done the same. In the public imagination, surrogacy is increasingly normalised as a “miraculous” solution to a heartbreaking problem: childlessness.
Christians should understand that heartache. Scripture is full of barren women who longed for children: Sarai, Hannah, Elizabeth. The pain of infertility is deserving of compassion. In this light, surrogacy markets itself as a story of generous sacrifice – providing children for the childless. Who could oppose something that promises to turn suffering into joy?
But Christians must be brave enough to look beneath the sentiment and ask a harder question: at what cost, and to whom?
Surrogacy rests on a troubling premise. It asks us to believe that pregnancy can be separated from motherhood – that a mother’s womb is just a “gestational oven” for somebody else’s “bun”. It demands that a woman can carry a child, give birth, and yet not truly be a mother to the same baby. And it positions the child as a product for transaction.
Even when wrapped in the language of “gift” and “kindness,” the structure remains contractual and commercial. A woman’s body is rented; a child is exchanged, usually for cash.
The Bible has already shown us where this logic leads.
The first surrogacy arrangement on record dates back as early as Genesis, when Sarai gave her servant Hagar to Abram in order to bear a child as a solution to their infertility. “Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” (Genesis 16:2).
It “worked.” Hagar conceived. But the fallout of the story shows the dark complications of treating women as mere reproductive entities.
Hagar is not empowered by the arrangement, but used. Once pregnant, Hagar is “mistreated” by Sarai, to the extent that she flees to the wilderness. Later (Genesis 21) she is cast out entirely – disposed of as a vessel, having served her purpose. Her son Ishmael, too, bears the cost. His life begins in displacement. He is wanted for the status he provides Sarai and Abram as “parents” - but not welcomed for who he is, a child of Hagar. He is later also abandoned when Sarai bears her own son.
Crucially, God does not endorse the system, but intervenes to rescue and comfort its victims. He hears Hagar’s cries in the wilderness, and in gratitude, she calls him “the God who sees me”. Later, he saves Ishmael’s life. Divine compassion appears after human exploitation, not in affirmation of it. The story of Hagar is a warning, not a guidebook.
the most vulnerable woman always pays the highest price
Modern surrogacy differs in technology, but not in principle. Today, a hired woman will usually carry a child through IVF, created through the genetic material of the commissioning parents – or, often, through donated sperm and/or egg from a fourth and fifth party. Such an arrangement fragments a child’s parentage line to the extent he may never have a chance to meet those who gave him his genes.
These modern technicalities don’t displace the harms. The power dynamics of a surrogacy arrangement disfavour the surrogate - almost always the more financially vulnerable party. Pregnancy permanently alters a woman’s body, psychology, and identity. Increasingly, Western would-be parents who don’t want to pay a premium for an American or European surrogate will look to Nigeria or Mexico to hire wombs at a cheaper rate.
Scandals emerge in the news frequently of surrogates pressured into abortions if the child becomes inconvenient to the commissioning parents midway through pregnancy; or left unexpectedly holding the baby when contractors change their minds at the end.
If participating in surrogacy was “empowering” rather than exploitative, why do we only see rich celebrities on one end of the deal? Why are they always collecting the children, rather than hiring out their own bodies to carry them for others?
In the UK, surrogacy is only allowed if “altruistic” - that is, a surrogate mother cannot be paid beyond reasonable “pregnancy expenses”. There’s no legal maximum on the expense sheet, which has been known to stack up as high as £60,000. But the number of zeros on a cheque can’t change the moral equation. An unborn baby knows her gestational mother’s voice, her heartbeat, her smell. That’s who she reaches for the minute she’s born. Psychologists note that at-birth severance from a birth mother can cause post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, attachment disorders, developmental delays and behavioural issues in later childhood.
When viewed through the eyes of the most vulnerable parties, surrogacy is revealed as exploitative and abusive. Hagar stands in scripture as a rebuke to this system that treats motherhood as contractual and transferrable. She reminds us that the most vulnerable woman always pays the highest price. And though many of today’s celebrity surrogacy announcements crop the surrogate mother from the family photo, Hagar reminds us that God sees her – and we should too.
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